Mending Fences
by ratgirl71
Summary: A look at the apology Angela might have given Booth for how she treated him after he broke the engagement-after the truth came out about WHY he broke it off.
1. Chapter 1

**I came up with this story because the show never touched on Angela apologizing to Booth for the way she treated him after he broke off the engagement. And whether you love her for defending Brennan, or not because she was awful to Booth (and I admit I'm on that side)-I think at the very least she should have recognized she completely misread the situation once the truth came out. In "The Woman on the List" she tells _Brennan_ she should have trusted him, which is at least an acknowledgement she was wrong, but the person she really needed to say that to was Booth. It's been twirling around my head-and my muse got a little jump start by mphs95's story "Actions Speak Louder Than Words".**

**Also-got a prompt from DorothyOz when I said I was considering this story-the idea that it start with Brennan asking Angela to apologize.**

**I don't really NEED to say I don't own _Bones_, right?**

* * *

Angela and Brennan were sitting in Brennan's office, waiting for Hodgins to finish up before they went home.

"So, I've got the dress under control, Sweetie. Talked to the seamstress-we've ironed everything out. All you need to do is show up for fittings. So-done deal. Score one for the maid of honor." She raised her hand as Brennan opened her mouth. "Sorry, _matron_ of honor."

Brennan smiled and stood up to start gathering everything together to take home. "Excellent."

"So, I know you and Booth want to make your own plans, but are you sure there isn't anything else I can do?"

Brennan stopped suddenly. She turned and gave a long look at Angela. "I-" And she stopped.

Angela swallowed, suddenly nervous. Brennan generally just said what was on her mind-often whether someone was ready or not. That she was hesitant to tell her best friend wasn't good.

"What, sweetie?"

Brennan took a deep breath and then said "I would like you to apologize to Booth."

Angela took a step back. "What?"

Brennan frowned. "I am fairly confident that it was an easily understood comment. I could perhaps understand if I were discussing anatomy-"

Angela waved her hands. "I understood the comment. Not the point. I'm just curious why you're bringing it up."

Brennan sighed and sat back down. "I know that you were looking out for me. You've been my best friend for a long time. I know you hated that I was hurt-and Booth was the one who hurt me, so you lashed out. No doubt Sweets could use some of his psychobabble to go into more detail, but that is not my forte. I understand, Angela, I do. But knowing everything we all know now, you have to admit we all misjudged him. You told me earlier you should have trusted him. We both should have. But you continued being angry after I had decided to trust him."

"He crushed you, sweetie. And then he distanced himself from you. I suspect I got to see more of that than he did."

"And that was Pelant's doing."

Angela snorted. "Booth helped."

Brennan shook her head. "Pelant threatened to kill people, Angela. You have not seen how that affects Booth. I have. And for him to know he was the cause-I suspect that reminded him of when he was a sniper. If Booth had broken his silence, innocent people would have died because of him. He's a good man-and a good Catholic. The guilt of that would have stayed with him forever, Angela. As angry as you were at Booth, surely you can see how it would be difficult to live with."

Angela looked down and whispered, "Yeah. I guess I can." She looked back up. "I didn't help when I accused him of cheating on you, did I?"

"Neither of us treated him particularly well after he broke off the engagement, Angela. I have made my apologies. I simply feel that after all the years you and Booth have known each other-and as close as all of us have become, that perhaps you should consider doing the same. You certainly seemed happy enough when we said the engagement was back on-so I doubt if you that Booth was that bad a man you wouldn't have been. " Brennan walked over and took Angela's hands. "Please, Angela. At least consider it. I would hate to think my best friend and my husband hate each other."

Angela let go of Brennan's hands and reached out to hug her. "I don't hate him. I don't think I ever really did. But I was angry. I saw what it did to you-and I couldn't help. Plus, honey, I'm not you. I don't compartmentalize well-I just react. I reacted badly in this case I know. God, I should have just listened to Hodgins when he told me to butt out. And I will apologize, sweetie, I swear. I just-give me some time. I want to do it right. I just don't want to screw it up so he never forgives me."

Brennan smiled. "I believe he will."

"What, because of his religion? Which I know you don't believe in, but-"

No, Angela," Brennan said, shaking her head. 'Because he knows how good a friend you are to me-and no doubt why you reacted the way you did. He knows you, Angela-he's had years to get to know you. I suspect that's part of why your reaction hurt. He would have assumed you knew better than to assume he 'had a fling', as I believe you put it. That was hardly helpful to the situation, by the way."

Angela sighed. "Yeah, I know." She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. "One apology, coming right up."

Brennan smiled, then both women turned at the sound of Hodgins' voice from the doorway. "Um if I'm interrupting I can go sit in a corner or something."

"No, babe, you're not." Angela walked over to her husband and linked her arm through his. Before they left, she turned back towards Brennan. "I will do it, sweetie. I swear. OK? This will be like dress-it's something you don't have to spend any time worrying over. This matron of honor is all over it-and see this time I got the word right-just for you."

Hodgins and Angela walked out to the sound of Brennan's laughter.

* * *

Next-the apology.

For what it's worth, I think neither Booth nor Angela dealt with the situation well, Yes, Booth did things like not answer calls, not coming home and he seemed distant-which fueled the whole cheating speculation-but Angela jumping into the middle of the situation by yelling at Booth, and being mean even after Brennan decided to trust Booth, was not helpful to anyone except that Angela got to vent. Didn't help the situation at all. And she seemed more than fine that the engagement was back on at the end of "The Sense in the Sacrifice" (before there was any explanation)-so Booth's only OK if he's actually marrying her friend? As much I ordinarily love Angela, it seems a little hypocritical considering how much she jerked Hodgins around when he first proposed.

And to anyone who's read any of my other stories-I just can't seem to help these author's notes. Don't feel obliged to read them-it's just I like for people to know where I'm coming from when I'm putting these stories out there.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Usual disclaimers apply (You know, the whole "don't own _Bones_ thing…)**

* * *

Hodgins walked into his wife's office and stopped. She was sitting on the floor scribbling furiously on a notepad, surrounded by crumpled pieces of paper.

"Um, what are you doing, Ange?"

Angela started a little and looked up. "Oh, hi! I didn't see you come in!"

"I could tell," Hodgins said drily. "Obviously you've been busy. Mind telling me with what?"

Angela looked back down and mumbled something.

"Sorry?"

Angela's head came up and she straightened her shoulders. "I'm trying to write down what I want to say to Booth to apologize. Brennan asked me-well, she thought I should."

Hodgins sat on the floor next to her. "So the only reason you're apologizing to Booth is because Dr. B wants you to? That's a pretty crappy reason, Ange-best friend or no best friend."

"No!' Angela sighed and put down the notepad. "I get that I overreacted. You were right, OK? Booth did have a reason for why he did what he did and I admit I went overboard. All I saw at the time, though, was how much Booth had broken down those walls Brennan has-and how much he hurt her after she was willing to change her mind on marriage. I mean, how do I reconcile those two things?"

"You'll figure it out, babe. You usually are pretty good at the off-the-cuff speeches."

Angela shook her head. "Except it was the same impromptu stuff that got me in trouble with Booth to begin with."

Hodgins shrugged. "Yeah, suggesting the fling and that he didn't find Dr. B attractive anymore was overkill." He raised his hand as Angela opened her mouth. "I get it, OK? I've told you that. Just, one time, try to see it from Booth's perspective. He has a psycho who'd made him break off an engagement he really wanted, he was trying to find said psycho, and he basically got zero support from friends. Hell, even _Cam_ gave him a hard time. And you-you kept giving him grief, even after Brennan made the decision to stick with him. Although, at least you didn't go the Daisy route and suggest someone new for her to date. And thank God for that."

"I wouldn't do that."

"No, you did everything else _but_ that. Look- I love the emotional, artistic you. It's the woman I married. It's just if you speak up at times you shouldn't, you have to accept there will be fallout from that. In this case, Booth's being mad at you." He reached across and took the pad from her. "Sweetheart, just speak from the heart. Don't go by notes-that's not you. I know how sorry you were when you found out what Pelant did. And I have no doubt that you can get that across to Booth. He's a good guy, Angela. I bet he'll get that. So, you have something in mind for when or where?"

Angela nodded. "I asked Booth to meet me at the Founding Fathers tonight after work. I told Brennan, so she knows not to expect Booth home right away. " She paused. "You don't mind getting Michael Vincent from day care do you?"

Hodgins kissed his wife and smiled at her. "I don't mind at all."

* * *

Angela stood at the entrance of the bar, fiddling with her purse strap. Looking around, she spotted Booth, took a deep breath, and walked over.

"Hey," she said.

Booth stood up. "Hey, Angela."

Angela sighed inwardly. The expression on his face was-well she couldn't say it was unfriendly. Guarded, she thought. Guarded and wary, like he expects me to take a piece out of him any second. I did this, she thought to herself. I've made it so a simple offer of meeting over drinks as a peace offering feels more to him like a possible ambush.

After they both ordered their drinks, Booth leaned back slightly and asked, "So what did you need to see me about?"

Angela licked her lips and fidgeted with her hands. "I-I don't –I have no clue where to start-"

"Hey." Angela looked up at Booth and saw that his expression had softened slightly. "Start where you need to. Are Hodgins and Michael Vincent OK?"

She smiled. "They're both fine. Spending way too much time in our backyard looking for bugs, but other than that, great."

Booth chuckled. "Now why am I not surprised?"

Angela gave a small laugh. "Because you know my husband?" Her smile faded. She looked down. "And I guess he knew you better than I did."

"What?"

Angela rubbed her forehead. "I wanted to meet here-just the two of us-so I could apologize for the way I treated you after you broke off the engagement." She turned and stared straight at Booth. "I get why you might still be angry and not want to cut me slack, but I'm hoping you can forgive me."

Booth was silent for several seconds. "Why would you accuse me an affair, Angela? I thought we knew each other better than that. I thought after all this time-and you know damn well everything Bones and I have been through, because I'm sure she's told you in gory detail-that you would have appreciated how much I love her."

Angela shrugged. "There's a part of me that knew that. But breaking the engagement was bad enough-then you separated emotionally from her. Hell, physically you stayed away some nights. I got to see the aftermath of all that, probably more than you. All I got to see was how much that was killing her-a little at a time. I can't tell you how happy she looked when she said she asked you to marry her. To go from that to the place she was in after you called it off-I just couldn't stand by and watch it happen. And it's not like you were explaining anything to anybody."

Booth slowly turned his face to Angela. "So I should have explained that Pelant was going to kill random people if I didn't break the engagement or if I told anyone. Who would I tell, exactly? Cam, who gave me a hard time about cold feet? Sweets-Mr. Busybody? You? Yeah, because I could trust _you_ not to tell Bones. No one was particularly supportive, Angela. Except-oh, wait-_your husband_ didn't jump on me for it. Imagine that."

"Booth-"

"No, Angela. I do understand why your reaction was what it was. And believe me, I know I didn't handle it well. I hurt Bones more than she had already been hurt. If you think I don't get that, than clearly you don't know me nearly as well as you think you do. But here's the thing Angela. You have never had someone's death on your conscience. I have. Men I killed as a sniper, men who've died in wars-whether my fault or not-people I've had to kill as a cop. You have no idea what that feels like, and I hope to God you never do. It's something I can't ever completely put behind me. Pelant used that, Angela. He used the fact that I wouldn't want an innocent person to die because of something I did. So I admit I stayed at the office longer a lot of nights than I should have. Do you have any idea what I was doing, Angela? I was looking for Pelant. Because I didn't want the twisted little bastard to take more from me than he already had."

Angela shrugged. "I get that. _Now_. And I know I overreacted. All I'm saying is that you were lying, staying out at night, coming home late-you're a cop. What would your first instinct have been? And I know Brennan has been known to be clueless about human behavior, but she's not an idiot. Even when you were there, you weren't really there. I got to listen to that from her, got to watch her start to shut herself down a little more every day. I hated that, Booth. She's my best friend, and I had to watch her go through that. I'm not Brennan. I already told her I don't compartmentalize well-not like her. I see and I react."

Booth gave a small smile. "For what it's worth, we have that in common. I didn't react well to your comments either. Let's just say we both said and did things we shouldn't have. You're Bones' best friend and you were calling me out on my behavior. Just-you need to try to keep in mind who you're talking to before you spout off, OK? After all these years, it hurt to know that's what you thought of me. I know you were Bones' friend first, and her best friend at that but I thought we were friends, too. Hell, between Cam, Sweets, Caroline-and Daisy Wick-I felt like I was getting hammered every time I turned around."

"Well, Daisy has that effect on everyone." Angela and Booth looked at each other and laughed. When they were done, Angela laid a hand on Booth's arm. "I really am sorry I and everyone around you made you feel like that. I stayed angry for a long time-it took being slapped in the face with what the situation really was to snap me out of it. And I don't know if I can make it up to you-"

Booth interrupted. "Just-look Bones and I will hit rough patches, even after we're married. I'm sure Bones will talk to you about this stuff. Please, though, could you at least simply listen before flying off the handle? I know it's awkward and painful for Bones to be in the middle of something like this, and I don't want to do that to her again. I can't imagine you do either."

Angela's eyes were beginning to fill with tears. "No, I don't. Damn, Hodgins really was right-I need to listen to him more. And if you tell him that-"

"Hey." Booth raised his hands. "make you a deal. I don't get between you and Hodgins, you don't get between me and Bones."

"I'll drink to that." As they toasted and then set their drinks down, Angela leaned over and gave Booth a small hug. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Booth returned the hug and whispered back, "I'm sorry too."

* * *

I hadn't planned to bring Hodgins in, but I figured he deserved some time for being the only person to not give Booth a hard time-at least recognizing that there was more going on than Booth was saying. Plus it gave me a chance to get in more of Angela's thoughts.

I wanted to make this somewhat balanced. I didn't like how Angela treated Booth, but I at least understand where she's coming from. And Booth and Angela do go more off of feelings, and I think that contributed to the hurtful conversations.

I'm debating a third sort of epilogue type chapter with Booth, Brennan and Angela (and possibly Hodgins). Let me know if you'd be interested. If there's enough interest I'll do it.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N Thank you everyone for the reviews and the encouragement regarding the third chapter. It's gratifying to know people read it and care enough to put their two cents in.**

**This will be set after the wedding/honeymoon, and there is a small spoiler for "The Woman in White". I gather there are countries where those episodes haven't aired, or people haven't seen them for some reason or another-I don't want to ruin anything for anybody. There won't be major spoilers (I'm not going into the complete plots or anything), but if you don't want to know anything about it until you see the episodes, you might want to hold off on this.**

**And, of course, I don't own _Bones_-although like many other people on this site, I wish I did.**

**This, quite honestly, will be mostly fluff. Enjoy!**

* * *

"Ugh, I think I ate too much, and now I could use a nap. It was a great picnic lunch, though, Dr. B." Hodgins was sprawled next to Angela on the large blanket. He, Angela, Brennan and Booth had decided to have a "family day out" after their last case, which had turned out to be a really rough one.

Brennan smiled. "I'm glad you enjoyed it, Dr. Hodgins."

"Michael Vincent, what are you doing?" Angela was the first one to notice her son had grabbed at something on the grass, and was showing it to Christine.

Her son waved his fist and yelled, "Bug!"

Angela muttered, "Oh, great." Louder she said, "I think you should put that down, honey."

Hodgins stood up. "I got this."

"Yeah, babe, that makes me feel _so_ much better."

Hodgins grinned widely, gave a little half-shrug, and went over to the kids.

Booth's voice cut in. "Angela, it's bad enough that I've got Bones turning my daughter into a squint-do I have to worry she's turning into another Hodgins? Because as much as I like your husband, one of him is more than enough in this world. I can just picture the bugs and experiments in the house, and frankly I'm cringing right now."

Brennan patted his arm. "Hodgins is an excellent scientist, Booth. If in fact he inspires Christine, than I don't believe that would be a bad thing."

Booth sighed. "Tell me that when we have to clean up after whatever experiment has gone wrong or bug has escaped, Bones."

Brennan paused. "You may have a point." She stood up and went to join, Hodgins, Christine and Michael Vincent.

Angela laughed. "You can't say being married to a scientist isn't interesting, Booth."

"Amen to that."

Angela turned to him and smiled. "I take it you're enjoying being married, then?"

Booth grinned back at her. "You know you don't have to keep pushing us toward each other anymore, right? You were there at the wedding-hell, you arranged the wedding." Booth sobered at that. "And I'm sure I told you, but it bears repeating. Thank you-not just for arranging the wedding, but arranging a _beautiful_ wedding. It really was perfect."

"Believe me, I wanted to. I know things were tense between us for a while, but I really wanted the wedding for both of you. And you guys were so stressed because of all the stuff that was going wrong, I couldn't just stand by and watch it."

Booth shook his head. "Angela, the queen of the meddlers? Of course you couldn't." At Angela's light punch to his arm, Booth laughed. "I mean that in the best possible way, Angela. You know that."

"Even if meddling caused problems between the two of us?"

Booth sighed. "You were looking out for Bones. I know I was angry, too-and maybe was harder on you than I needed to be, but I really am glad she has you as her friend. You can be there and help her when I can't. We both look out for her-but for God's sake don't tell her that, or we'll both get lectures on how she can take care of herself-it's just at the time we had different ways of going about it. But we're good now, right? And have been for a while."

"Yeah, we're good. And you're right-we may have different ideas on what's best for Brennan, but we both want what's best for her. And I recognize that for her, you are."

"I hope so. I know for sure she's what's best for me-her and Christine."

Angela nodded. "I can see that. And speaking of-" She broke off and nodded at the little group headed back to the blanket."

Booth rubbed his forehead. "So, any guesses on what your son found, and what your husband did with it?"

Angela held up her hands. "No way am I going there."

As Hodgins set down Michael Vincent, Angela asked him, "So should I be worried that we're going to have a new exotic pet that's going to freak me out?"

Hodgins shook his head. "Nope. Just a _Coccinella septempunctata_. We put it back."

"You can't help yourself, can you Hodgins?"

"It was a ladybug, Booth," Brennan interjected.

"Bug!" Christine clapped her hands.

"Bug!" Michael Vincent repeated excitedly.

"Yeah, sweetie, a pretty bug. And Daddy let it go home, I'm assuming?" This said with a slight glare at Hodgins.

He held up his hands. "Of course I did. We have some of those already."

Booth murmured under his breath, "Of _course_ you do, Bug Boy."

* * *

I just wanted to make this a short, fun chapter showing the relationship between the two as being back on track. And I couldn't resist adding Hodgins and his bugs-because I can totally see him and Michael Vincent "bug hunting." Maybe that's just me.


End file.
